Eric Ravilious & Tirzah Garwood: One Couple, Two Exhibitions

Tirzah and Eric Ravilious painting a mural at the Midland Hotel, Morecambe

Artist couples are fascinating. Like the rest of us they have a public life and a private life, only the hidden world of an artist couple or family is often revealed - if only in tantalising glimpses - in correspondence, diaries and in artworks themselves. In some cases the relationship has proved inspirational to both halves of the couple, but often one artist's work tends to pushed into the background as the career of the other takes off.

Still going strong in 2012

The history of 20th century British art is rich in artist couples. There are those who, like Gilbert and George, have pooled their identities to form an artistic double act and others, among them Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan, who succeeded in maintaining parallel careers. This was true too of Ben and Winifred Nicholson, a couple whose artistic relationship long outlived their marriage; they were still busily writing to each other about painting decades after splitting up, although you wouldn't know it to judge from the books about Ben.

I was at the Central Library in Bristol the other day - it has a wonderful art history collection - and on asking about Ben Nicholson in the Reference section was presented with a trolleyful of books, each one progressively bigger and glossier and less comprehensible. His first wife merited a solitary book. 

Personally, I think Winifred's best work is beautiful. I also think the importance of intimate relationships is underplayed in conventional art history, which tends to consider artists in terms of similar artists and via the art historical theories of the day. An artist is only 'important' if they fit within the narrative - but you don't need me to tell you that...

Winifred Nicholson, Bonnie Scotland, 1951 (Tullie House)

Eric Ravilious was virtually invisible ten years ago and is now a central figure in the alternative story of 20th century British art that Alexandra Harris has championed in her 2010 book 'Romantic Moderns'. The exhibition of his watercolours which opens at the RWA in Bristol next week will be the third show in consecutive years, each one given little attention in the national press but attracting unprecedented numbers of visitors nonetheless.

Tirzah Garwood, The Train Journey, 1929-30

His work also features in a second exhibition opening this month, at the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden, but he is not the main subject. 'Long Live Great Bardfield!' is a show about Rav's wife, Tirzah, and the creative force behind it is Anne Ullmann, their daughter and the author/editor of several stunning books about them. Over the past few years she's been editing her mother's autobiography, 'Long Live Great Bardfield, & Love to You All', which is about to be published by the Fleece Press.

Eric Ravilious, Train Landscape, 1939 (Aberdeen Art Gallery)

I've written before about Tirzah, who learned wood engraving from Eric and as Tirzah Garwood became an outstanding printmaker in her own right. She gave this career up to concentrate on raising her children, but didn't give up art per se. Throughout her married life she made marbled papers, which at different times she sold through London boutiques, and she also assisted Eric, publicly when he was commissioned to paint murals at the Midland Hotel, Morecambe, and privately in ways we will probably never fully appreciate. Her contribution to the painting 'Train Landscape' (1939) is one of my favourite instances.

Tirzah Ravilious, The Old Soldier, 1947

After Eric's death she took up oil painting and also made a series of unusual relief pictures of shops. This work is rarely shown, except at the Fry, and the appearance of two examples on the Antiques Road Show last year caused some consternation to their resident expert. Now we have the opportunity to look at Tirzah's work properly and also to read what she thought about married life with Eric. Famous for her fiery letters, I suspect that she had a thing or two to say...

'Eric Ravilious: Going Modern / Being British' is at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, from Saturday March 10th.

'Long Live Great Bardfield!' opens at the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, on March 31st.

Wood engravings by Eric Ravilious are included in an exhibition of work from the archive of the Society of Wood Engravers, showing until March 23rd at Manchester Metropolitan University.

'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' will be launched at the RWA on March 10th, 12-2pm

John Piper, David Jones & The Queen: Art in Cardiff

John Piper, Llanthony Priory, 1941 (private collection)

By the time I'd worked my way through both rooms of the The Queen: Art and Image at the National Museum of Wales, one thing was clear: this is a monarch who likes having her picture taken. There are photos of her smiling, photos of her tight-lipped, magisterial pictures in which she looms over the viewer. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about the monarchy, but one or two of the photos oozed power. Never mind all that democratic nonsense, I found myself thinking, she's the boss. By contrast, Lucian Freud's tiny painting makes her look like a camp little man of a certain age. I guess he was trying to tell us something too.

But I wasn't in Cardiff to look at Royal portraits. In fact I didn't know the exhibition was on until I walked into the room and saw the same face repeated over and over, reimagined by Warhol, Gilbert and George and sundry others but still essentially the same unknowable woman. If there is a real, hidden Elizabeth beneath the public persona, this exhibition leaves her in peace.

Pietro Annigoni, Queen Elizabeth II, 1969 (Nat Port Gall)

I'd been meaning to visit the Welsh equivalent of the National Gallery for a while, to see a temporary exhibition of work by David Jones, and when I read that a Piper exhibition had just started as well I rushed down to Temple Meads and took a train Across the Border. It's been a while since I visited Cardiff, and I was struck on arrival by how different it is: flat, expansive and conceived on a grand scale. The place has the air of a provincial French city, a character best expressed in the flamboyant old stone palaces that house the City Hall and National Museum, and in the neighbouring parks and boulevards.

Once inside the museum I headed straight for the Piper show, a public display of a private collection comprised mostly of dramatic mountain scenes. I hadn't realised before quite how much time that quintessential wandering artist spent in Wales, but it seems he practically lived in Snowdonia in the 1940s and 1950s. Personally, I don't think that the mountain paintings, which are dramatic but rather formless, show him at his best, but there was one gorgeous treat: a painting of Llanthony Priory from the 1940s. Nobody has ever captured the peculiar atmosphere surrounding an English or Welsh church quite like Piper, and here the dramatic contrast of darkness and light (the wall on the right is a dazzling golden yellow) is enhanced by a wonderful texture; the paint surface is covered in swirls and squiggles that almost form a pattern but instead reinforce the sense of age and beauty.

Thank heavens he gave up abstraction.

David Jones, Capel-y-ffin, 1926/7 (NM Wales)

I got distracted by the Queen after that, but presently located the corridor where a dozen or so paintings by David Jones hang in light so carefully controlled that you peer at the pictures as if through a Welsh mist. Which I suppose is authentic. Jones is less well-known than Ravilious, Bawden and other watercolourists of the age, partly because his subject matter and style are eccentric, to say the least, and partly because he chose to work so lightly that he makes Rav, by contrast, seem as bold as Matisse.

A Londoner of mixed Anglo-Welsh parentage, Jones served in the Great War and subsequently suffered two nervous breakdowns that hampered his career just as he was becoming established. This was in the early 1930s, after a productive decade which he had spent working alongside Eric Gill, first at Ditchling, Sussex, and then at Capel-y-Ffin in the Welsh Marches. In later years Jones produced increasingly odd pictures, often in pencil and crayon, covering the paper with mythical figures, plants and flowers and symbols of one kind and another. These are fascinating but less accessible than his landscapes from the 1920s which, though sometimes agonisingly delicate, are beautifully crafted and highly original.

Gwen John, Girl in a Green Dress (NM Wales)

I was hoping to see some of his work from Capel-y-Ffin, and was rewarded with one lovely picture. The man was evidently brilliant (TS Eliot described his epic 1937 war poem 'In Parenthesis' as a work of genius) but with little interest in artistic fame. I want to see more!

Another artist of that productive era of whom the same could be said is Gwen John (who was born in Pembrokeshire), and it was a pleasant surprise to happen upon a clutch of her portraits hanging next to a group of her brother's. Where Augustus John's pictures are bright and expressive - crying out to be noticed, you might say - Gwen's are self-effacing and thoughtful. In a couple of the portraits the subjects seem about to fade into the background, but they are beautiful nevertheless.

James Dickson Innes, Arenig, 1913 (NM Wales)

The art galleries of the National Museum are full of treats like this. I'd been wanting for a long time to see some paintings by James Dickson Innes, a bohemian friend of Augustus John who died of TB in his twenties, and here were half a dozen or more, scattered through the collection. I could see right away why people used to rave (maybe they still do) about the jewel-like colours in his landscapes, which are mostly small but striking.

One final surprise awaited me in the room devoted to Welsh landscape: a picture I've been thinking about a lot over the past year. 'Waterwheel' is one of my favourite Ravilious paintings, and one that features in 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist', and it was fascinating to come across it like that, unexpectedly and in a room full of landscapes by other artists of different generations. What struck me instantly was the quality of the light, both the luminous sky and the radiance surrounding the waterwheel like a halo. In that brightness I felt the motion of the waterwheel and heard the gurgling water - a place (Capel-y-Ffin) and a moment (dawn, early March 1938) brought to life.

Eric Ravilious, Waterwheel, 1938 (Brecknock Museum)

'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' is being bound, and will be available very soon! Come and say hello at the RWA, Bristol on Saturday March 10th, when I'll be signing copies...

Eric Ravilious: Illustrated Talks for 2012

Eric Ravilious, Rye Harbour, 1938

I've just proof-read 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' for the last time, so now it's up to the printers, who I'm sure will produce a fabulous book. It's strange to think that almost four years have passed since we first started talking about 'Sussex and the Downs', which in turn grew out of the quest Tim Mainstone and I went on to find the shops depicted by Ravilious in 'High Street' (1938).

One of the things I've really enjoyed about this whole adventure is meeting people at talks, signings and exhibition launches, so I'm excited to have lots of events coming up. Mostly these are illustrated talks in which I show slides of paintings, archive photographs and my own pictures, and talk about the stories and characters associated with them. So far, the dates booked for this year go like this:

Saturday March 10th, 12-2pm: Launch and signing of 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist',
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol.

Saturday March 24th, time TBC: Illustrated Talk on Eric Ravilious, RWA, Bristol (contact RWA for ticket info).

Tuesday March 27th, 7pm: Celebrating Eric Ravilious, Illustrated Talk at The Old Chapel Centre, Alfriston, Sussex (contact Much Ado Books for ticket info).

Thursday June 28th, time TBC: Eric Ravilious & the White Horses of Wiltshire, Illustrated Talk at the Assembly Room, Town Hall, Devizes, Wilts (part of Devizes Festival - see website nearer the time for ticket info)

Sunday Sept 2, 3pm: Eric Ravilious: A Life in Pictures, Illustrated Talk with me AND Alan Powers at the Birley Centre, Eastbourne (ticket info nearer the time from Friends of the Towner)

Friday Sept 21st, time TBC: Two Travelling Artists - Paul Nash & Eric Ravilious, Illustrated Talk at the Rye Arts Festival (info from Rye Arts Festival nearer the time)

I don't think I've missed anything out, although it's always possible... Other events will probably be arranged as the year progresses. If you're interested in booking a talk, please get in touch via the Comments or Twitter, or contact The Mainstone Press.

Ravilious Watercolours on Show in March!

We'll be launching the new book at the RWA, Bristol, on Saturday 10 March!

Exciting news for art lovers in the West Country! On 10 March an exhibition of watercolours, wood engravings and lithographs by Eric Ravilious (1903-42) will open at the Royal West of England Academy here in Bristol.

After the phenomenal success of Ravilious shows in Eastbourne (Towner, 2010) and Saffron Walden (Fry Art Gallery, 2011), it will be wonderful to see a substantial body of work on display in the West of England. I haven't seen a full list of pictures yet, but there will definitely be some favourites on show, alongside paintings that people may not have seen before.

from Ladies Who Travel

At the Towner exhibition, 'Familiar Visions', we saw the artist's paintings of Sussex alongside his son James Ravilious's photographs of Devon. The Fry also took a regional angle, concentrating on 'Ravilious in Essex'. This time around the organisers are taking a slightly more academic approach, using the title 'Going Modern/Being British' as a starting point. It was Paul Nash, the painter's teacher, who asked in the early 1930s whether it was possible to be a modern artist while retaining qualities he considered to be traditionally British. In paintings like 'Event on the Downs' he tackled this question head on, but he'd already addressed it in more subtle ways earlier in his life.

He was particularly influential in the 1920s as a champion of wood engraving and watercolour. These were in no sense new media, but they had been so neglected in the 19th century that they must have seemed fresh and exciting to young artists in the aftermath of the Great War. Nash's 1924 exhibition of landscapes in watercolour was a dazzling success, but with most of the pictures in private hands it is difficult for us to appreciate just how good - and how innovative - this work was.

We are much luckier with Ravilious, who was studying with Nash at the time and went on to master both of his teacher's favourite media. As a wood engraver he was rarely surpassed - a fact that was acknowledged during his lifetime - but as a watercolourist the very good reputation he had built up before his death is only now recovering from a long period of neglect. It's wonderful that so many of his paintings have survived, in excellent condition, and that so many are either in public collections or owned by people who are more than willing to lend them for exhibitions.

Eric Ravilious, Interior at Furlongs, 1939 (DACS)

Ravilious is often described as 'quintessentially English' rather than British, a distinction which I think makes him seem a slightly parochial figure - as does his lack of interest in artistic movements and theories. In fact he numbered Henry Moore and other modernist luminaries among his friends, and travelled as widely as circumstances allowed; he painted ordinary things - an old car, a greenhouse, a barbed wire fence - in a way that made people see them in a new light, which suggests a modern mind at work.

David Hockney, Winter Timber

I'm glad this show will be on at the same time as David Hockney's exhibition at the Royal Academy. The two exhibitions will prove a wonderful study in contrast, with giant, boldly coloured pictures on the one hand, and small, delicately-nuanced paintings on the other - brass band vs solo violin. Yet the two artists also have so much in common, in particular a vital understanding that mystery and beauty reside in the most ordinary scenes.

Eric Ravilious: Going Modern/Being British is at the RWA, Bristol, from 10 March until 29 April
David Hockney: A Bigger Picture is at the RA, London, until 9 April

We will be launching 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' at the RWA, Bristol, on 10 March, and on 24 March I will be giving an illustrated talk based on my researches for the new book, also at the RWA.

Illuminations on BBC4: Intelligent Telly!

Dr Ramirez: look, no gloves!

Last night I belatedly started watching the BBC mini-series 'Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings' and about half-way through the first episode I witnessed something extraordinary: two women standing in front of a cathedral, discussing the Anglo-Saxon King Edgar as if this was the most natural thing in the world. There was no rousing music. There were no special effects. Nobody was making outrageous claims about anything, or trying to shock - although we did hear a Chaucerian tale of nuns being pursued by the lusty monarch. It was like listening to the radio - only with pictures!

I'm sure I've seen art historian Dr Janina Ramirez on TV before - yes, I remember now. It was a few months ago, and she was talking about Icelandic sagas with an engaging earnestness that she also brings to the subject of illuminated manuscripts and the world in which they were created. Unashamedly academic and proud of her ability to recite poems with an authentic (we assume) Anglo-Saxon accent, she seemed genuinely thrilled to be let loose among the British Library's collection of Royal Manuscripts shortly before they went on show to the public last November.

The Alphonso Psalter (click name for details), British Library

This I can completely understand. For anyone who has a passion for any subject, there's nothing like handling a precious artefact, whether it's a book, a painting or a pair of Elvis's sneakers. And no gloves! When I saw her flicking through the first book with her ungloved fingers I thought Security would show up at any moment and carry her away, but then we were told that this is BL policy: bare fingertips are far more sensitive, apparently, and less likely to damage thousand year-old vellum.

The first episode was admirably simple. We saw books in the library. We saw the cathedrals, formerly monasteries, where they were made. We saw a few enthusiasts, also some cows (vellum on the hoof). The iPad, if that's what it was - other tablets are available - was put to good use, and on occasion text and pictures rose off the page and floated about in a pleasingly modern way. There was an assumption throughout that the viewer had a basic grasp of British history after the Fall of Rome - which may have been slightly over-generous - but in the main 'Illuminations' was as good as a Radio 4 documentary (something you can't say about many TV shows).

King Edgar, New Winchester Charter (click name for details) BL

But perhaps I'm biased. A long time ago now I studied illuminated manuscripts and once put on a slide show with images and pages from psalters and similar books. I've since seen different books at odd times and I love them. I love the ancient vellum and the glorious handwriting, and the personal quirks that Ramirez picked up on so well - the annotations and corrections and scribbles. Most of all, though, I love the bright, eccentric, personal illustration of these books, which you can see echoed in the work of more recent artists - from William Blake to Quentin Blake.

Some of the decoration I've seen so far has been breathtaking, preserved (as the presenter noted) for centuries by having been hidden away within the covers of a book. I'm looking forward to watching more, and visiting the exhibition of Royal Manuscripts at the British Library (ends March 12, I think).